Oxman

I hadn’t planned to post on Charles Oxman again, but I felt encouraged by emails and  recollection of a discussion board last year or overhearing in conversation someone comparing the visorless wheelhouse to the conning tower of a cold war submarine . . .

Oxman, then known as Falk was designed that way back in 1940.  Were other visorless siblings also built for some specific purpose?  Was Falk a one-off wheelhouse design?  I’ve also  always wondered about the choice of “Falk” as this vessel’s name:

“Falk” is the title of a 1901 short story by my all-time top five writers, Joseph Conrad.  Read the short story here. “Falk” happens to be a recollection of events in life of a British tugboat captain working in Thailand a century ago.

Back to Oxman, the vessel is named for a community college professor as related in this article I’ve always liked.  A close-up of Oxman (go here and click click on foto)  shows another name Oxman‘s carried, St. Petersburg,  which

–though unrelated–is similar to the name of this vessel.  I took this foto in Kingston almost a year ago.    Petersburg, I believe, is the tug I couldn’t identify at the end of the post here on QE2’s final departure from the sixth boro back last October.

Back to Oxman, this Pusey and Jones tug also went by the name A P St Philip.  Anyone have fotos of the vessel bearing these names?

Photos, WVD.